of Sumatra the sea was coated with a mass of cinders two feet thick, and many miles in extent, and ships with difficulty forced their way through it. "We grounded," says one of Sir Stamford's correspondents, "on the bank of Bima town. The anchorage of Bima must have been altered considerably, as, where we grounded, the Ternate cruiser lay at anchor in six fathoms a few months before." The area over which the effects of the eruption extended was upwards of two thousand English miles in circumference: the surface of Sumbawa was considerably altered; acclivities were turned into valleys, and valleys into elevations; and of its unfortunate inhabitants, out of a population of twelve thousand, only twenty-six persons escaped.

The volcanic regions include those where there are active vents and extinct craters, with intervening districts often shaken by earthquakes and abounding with hot springs, the evidences of subterranean igneous action. There are three large continuous areas of this kind.

To the island at the southern extremity of America, F. Magellan gave the name of Terra del Fuego, or the land of fire, no doubt from the sensible display of igneous activity; for the assertion of Malte Brun is corroborated by the evidence of Captain Hall with reference to the existence of an active volcano at the present time. Proceeding northward along the coast which fringes the Pacific Ocean, there is scarcely one degree of latitude from 46° to 27° in which there is not an active vent. The Chilian volcanoes rise up through granitic mountains. Villarica, one of the principal, is always burning, and so lofty as to be distinguished at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles. A year never passes without some slight shocks of earthquakes in the province, and about once in a century, or oftener, tremendous convulsions shake the land from one end to the other. In Peru there is the same continual disturbance of the surface, more or less violent, though only one active volcano is at present known. Still further north, about the middle of Quito, where the Andes attain their loftiest altitude, the peaks of Tunguragua, Cotopaxi, and Antisana are in frequent play. From the sides of the former a mass of mud was ejected in 1797, which dammed up rivers, occasioned new lakes, and filled up valleys a thousand feet wide to the depth of six hundred feet. In the province of Pasto, farther north, there are three volcanoes; in Papayan, three others; in Guatimala and Nicaragua, no less than twenty are in an active state. Hitherto we

have followed this great volcanic chain almost due north. In Mexico, however, it turns off in a side direction, extending. on the west to the isles of Revilagido and the Californian peninsula, and embracing eastward the whole of the West Indian isles. The length of this enormous chain, from Cape Horn to New Madrid in the United States, is greater than from the pole to the equator. Its westward extent is hid from us by the waters of the Pacific; but probably it reaches across the whole of its immense bed. Cotopaxi is described by Humboldt as the most beautiful and regular of all the colossal summits of the Andes, being a perfect cone, which is covered with snow, and shines with dazzling splendour at sunset.

There are no rocks projecting through its icy mantle, except near the edge of the crater, which is surrounded by a small circular wall. The traveller tried to reach the summit,

but failed, owing to the cone being surrounded by deep ravines, and pronounces the ascent to the crater impossible. This is the highest of the Andean volcanoes which have recently been in an active state. If the 3932 feet of Vesuvius were planted upon the top of Etna, which has an elevation of 10,873, Cotopaxi would not be equalled in altitude by 4073 feet. Its eruptions have been upon a scale corresponding with its magnitude. In 1738 its fires ascended 2953 feet above the crater, and in 1744 its voice was heard at Honda, on the river Magdalena, a distance of nearly seven hundred miles. In 1768 the inhabitants of two neighbouring towns were obliged to use lanterns by day in the streets, owing to the quantity of ashes ejected, and at two hundred miles' distance Humboldt and Bonpland heard its noises day and night, like the discharges of a battery, during the explosion of 1803.

A second line of volcanic action, upon as gigantic a scale as the preceding, commences at one of the most western points of North America, the peninsula of Alaska, in latitude 55°. It pursues a western course for about two hundred geographical miles, embracing the Aleutian isles, and reaching to the opposite coast of Kamtschatka. Throughout the whole of this tract earthquakes are of frequent occurrence, and the bed of the sea and the surface of the land are often altered by their tremendous violence. Seven active volcanoes are found at the southern extremity of the peninsula of Kamtschatka, and from thence the chain trends to the Kurile isles, where nine more are known to have been in eruption. Still southerly, the line extends to the Japanese group, where there are a considerable number, and where the disruption of the surface of the land in some districts is almost incessant, and sometimes violent. Passing the tropic of Cancer, the range embraces the Loo Choo archipelago, the Philippine and Ladrone islands, and is prolonged south to New Guinea. Here it branches off in a vast transverse line, extending on the one hand into the heart of the Pacific, and on the other through Java and Sumatra into the Bay of Bengal.

A third chain traverses the whole of the southern part of the European continent, a distance of above a thousand geographical miles. It commences at the Azores, and extends to the Caspian Sea, having for its northern boundaries the Tyrolian and Swiss Alps, and for its southern bounds the northern kingdoms of Africa. This district has frequently been visited with earthquakes, those of Lisbon and Calabria causing the whole continent to vibrate at the shock. Etna, Vesuvius, and Stromboli are at present the chief active vents, but anciently Vesuvius was in a state of torpor, and the island of Ischia was the scene of volcanic explosion. This small spot, about eighteen miles in circumference, now containing a population of twenty-five thousand, was frequently abandoned by its inhabitants on account of its violent convulsions. Before the Christian era, the Erythreans, the Chalcidians, and a colony established by Hiero king of Syracuse, were successively driven from it. Ischia however sunk into repose, which has not since been disturbed, only with one exception, when Vesuvius, in the year 79, burst forth from the stillness of ages, and overwhelmed the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii with its ashes. The eruptions of Etna are mentioned as occurring from the earliest periods to which history and tradition extend. Thucydides speaks of three between the colonization of Sicily by the Greeks and the commencement of the Peloponnesian war in the year B. C. 431. It was a fable of the Greek mythology, that the giant Typhos was confined beneath Sicily, his outstretched limbs extending under the Italian peninsula, and the terrible natural phenomena of the region were assigned to the struggles of the imprisoned monster. Pindar, in his first Pythian ode, says: "The sea-girt heights above Cuma, and Sicily too, press upon his shaggy breast; and the pillar of heaven, snowy Etna, the perennial nurse of sharp pinching snow, holds him fast. From the recesses of Etna are vomited forth the purest streams of fire, immeasurable in extent. By day the fiery

current pours forth a burning torrent of smoke, but by night, the red flame, rolling along masses of rock, plunges them with loud crash into the surface of the sea. That monster

sends up such horrid streams of Hephaestus (Vulcan) - a sight wonderful to look on; wonderful, too, to hear of from those who have seen it." Etna, when viewed from a distance, appears a very symmetrical cone, but there are upwards of eighty minor yet conspicuous cones upon its sides. At a late eruption, which occurred in November 1832, the mountain sent forth a stream of lava eighteen miles long including its windings, a mile broad, and thirty feet thick, which approached within two miles of the town of Bronte, and threatened it with destruction.

In addition to this general outline of extensive volcanic regions, there are isolated spots where similar phenomena are displayed. The Peak of Teneriffe, in the Canary Islands, is an imposing volcano, with its highest crater apparently sealed up, but lateral eruptions are of recent date. Iceland, Jan Mayen, and the south coast of Greenland, constitute a considerable volcanic system.

Fatal to human life as the eruptions of the volcano have occasionally been, large views of such physical events will awaken impressions at variance with those which their detached observation often excite. He who, living on the slopes of Vesuvius, witnesses his vine-clad dwelling, or his native village, overwhelmed with the lava and ashes of the mountain, is apt to become exclusively occupied with the disaster, and will not readily reflect upon the many millions of mankind who enjoy a quiet habitation, and whose locality has never been disturbed within the period that history and tradition have chronicled such occurrences. Yet nothing is more truc than that the same agency which is occasionally destructive in a few spots upon the world's expanse, has operated in forming or upheaving the universal crust of the globe, and has thus been the means of building up sure resting places for unnumbered myriads of the human family. It is that protruding or elevating power also that has rendered the coal formations and mineral veins

accessible, and thus supplied commerce with its sinews; and comparing the physical history of the globe with the career of its inhabitants, how harmless the Etnas and Cotopaxis of nature appear, in contrast with the Cæsars and Napoleons of mankind! A slight survey of the features of the external world is sufficient to show, that the tendency of their general arrangement is to minister to the happiness of man, to give him pleasure in the act of contemplation, as well as to contribute to his convenience. Its surface, so finely diversified, is eminently calculated for the gratification of its occupiers, and expands around them in every clime an array of beauty and grandeur, sometimes apart from each other, but often blended in wild yet tasteful and imposing combinations. Wherever the traveller penetrates, he finds the terrestrial configuration so arranged in ever-varying outline as to spread before him an inviting picture of natural scenery, which captivates, or soothes, or elevates, or excites the mind, and furnishes such pleasurable emotions as dull uniformity would not have yielded. Especially do the elevations which mark the face of the earth, whether rising to the stately proportion of mountains, or forming only the rounded, greenclad hill, give interest, grace, or sublimity to the landscape. But the mountains perform a more important office than that of giving imposing effect and picturesque beauty to the scenery of the earth. Occupying a portion of its surface nearly equal to that which the sandy desert claims, they stand associated with political and other results of the highest importance to mankind. Where the ocean does not extend its waters to divide the families, kindreds, and tongues of the human race, the granite snow-crowned rampart is frequently the line of demarcation. Nations have thus been kept apart from each other by natural boundaries; and the difficulties connected with aggressive wars between communities thus separated, have contributed to promote peace and maintain independence. The mountains also officiate in arresting and condensing the vapours by their cold summits, and storing up their precipitated waters in interior reservoirs, from whence they issue by a thousand springs; and in the dens and caves that perforate their declivities liberty and religion have often found a secure asylum, when assailed by persecuting power and grasping ambition. "The precious things of the lasting hills "-the phrase of the dying Hebrew patriarch-is not without its appropriate significancy. Inglis, wandering in the Tyrol, recognised its truth, when, as he remarks, he emerged from the mountains after a day's ramble, with pleasant recollections of lights and shadows yet lingering on the vision-of solitude and stillness, and the small mountain sounds that are more akin to silence than noise—and of all the thousand deep-felt but inexpressible emotions, that are born among the eternal hills, when evening fills their valleys, creeps over their declivities, and throws its mantle on their summits.

While mountains, whether volcanic or otherwise, occasionally rise on one side from a low level, and descend abruptly to it again on the other, they are far more generally connected with extensive tracts of elevated country, which is either intersected or bounded by them. These highly raised regions may undulate with hill and vale, but have comparatively level surfaces, and are known as plateaus or table-lands. The principal example in Europe is in Spain, which consists of a high central nucleus, surrounded by a narrow belt of maritime lowlands. Madrid, the capital, on a plain, is 2170 feet above the sea. the royal palace of the Escurial has an elevation of 3520 feet, very little lower than the top of Snowdon; and the site of La Granja, the summer residence of the sovereigns, is elevated 3943 feet. This would appear a castle in the air, if isolated, and viewed from the sea-level, being at a greater altitude than the summit of Vesuvius. The grand examples of plateau formations are Trans-Atlantic and Asiatic.

But

A considerable portion of Bolivia and Upper Peru, is a plateau remarkable for its altitude, 13,000 feet. It is formed by the top of the main mass of the Andes, and stretches between the mountain-knots of Cuzco and Potosi, north and south, and the Cordillera